Rice Production in Cambodia

2017/03/16

Group2 Niwa, Muramatsu, Shimoda, Uchida

In Cambodia, theme of our field trip was to consider the future vision of rice production in rural area. We went to Wat Chas village and Samroang Premprey Village and we interviewed to village farmers. Wat Chas village has 115 families and they have 60 ha land for rice production. They get about 800 riel / kg from rice production. They can’t make enough money from rice, so farmer’s son and daughter go to Thailand or Phnom Penh to earn money. Actually, when we went to this village, we didn’t see young man. Samroang Premprey Village has 234 families. They have 163 ha land for growing crops, and 55 ha of all land is for dry season and 108 ha of all is for rainy season. 75% of the land is for rice production, and the rest is for other crops. They normally sell the rice to middle man. Through the field trip, we had two objectives in Cambodia. First is to know present situation of rice production in two villages. Second is to think how to improve rural villagers’ life from the view of rice production. Before the survey, we had hypothesis like that, “Farmers get low income from rice production because they don’t have any technology or machineries for their rice production.”

Next, we introduce the overview of rice production in two villages. We would like to focus on 3 same points between two villages for a start. Firstly, Most of farmers use 2 types of fertilizer (Urea & Organic-PK) PLUS cattle stool. Then, how to scatter cattle stool. In dry seasons, they release cows to their paddy fields. Cows eat remain rice after harvest and make stool there. That stool become a good fertilizer. Secondary, raining season rice is depended on rain water. Finally, they grow rice for family and also for selling to middle man.

Second, we focus on the different points between two villages.

Wat Chas village

Samroang Premprey Village

・The famers grow 2 times/year

・Rice production is depended on Raining Water, so if there is not enough rain, they use water pond will use by pomp

・The famers grow 3 times/year
(Two times for raining season and one time in dry season)

・They have irrigation system, which enables them to grow rice in dry season ・Government & company come to village and help farmer to know how to use machine.

From the survey in the two villages, we can get some suggestion for our objectives. We notice that the most important thing about farmers is they cannot get the enough income from rice production and one of the biggest cause of low income is they don’t have enough machine for cultivation. They have a little number and kind of machine, but those are not enough for farmers. Small scale of their land is also problem for using machine because machine cannot be used enough in narrow space. Therefore we had to find the way to use machine by low cost, and we can show the one way. Each of some farmers have small land where machine cannot be used. They become using machine and can do large scale farming, if they gather each lands and make one large land. This may cause the high income because they can do the stable farming.

We also find the other point of view of suggestions. Firstly, we would like to focus on education plan. Farmers need knowledge about agriculture and how to use technology, so we suggest these three plan. First, we think making farmer's school is best, but it is very expensive. We find the better way, it is teaching agriculture in elementary school. We think this plan is very cheap and easy because there are elementary schools in two villages. Second, they don't know the advantage of using sustainable soil and irrigation system. If farmers are able to have the place to learn knowledge about agriculture like elementary school, they should learn the advantage of using sustainable soil and irrigation system to farmers. If farmers understand the advantage, more farmers use irrigation system and get more income because they don’t depend on the rain water. Third, government officer said farmers don't know how to use machine, so they loss most of harvest. Government want to teach farmers how to use machine, but he said it is difficult because it need high cost and many staff, so we suggest making manual about machine.

We also focused on government plan. Farmer said they can't get enough income, but we think they can get enough income if farmers have huge field. We suggest government develop the land not used and rent for farmers. Farmers will get enough income from rice production. Farmers also said they don't have any information about rice variety. For example, which variety is good taste or which variety is aromatic? We think this situation is not good, and we suggest making manual for choosing rice variety. Now, farmers grow not good variety of rice, but if farmers use better variety of rice, they can more quantity of rice, so get more income. In the end, making manual is one of the best way to solve some problems of farmers.

Through our survey, we got conclusion. Farmers got low income as our hypothesis that farmers got low income from rice production because they didn’t have any technology or machine for their rice production. Then, we think that if farmers get more quantity of rice, they can get more income. And think they can change rice production more effectively by using machines. Showing that future vision of machine, education and government can develop the ideal to the farmers.